Eating Disorder Rewrite

Touching On The Numerous Types Of Eating Disorders

There’s no such thing as a “blanket” eating disorder.

Eating disorders do not fit in a nice little bucket of description, do not afflict a certain specific demographic of the population, and do not stem from the same psychological, physiological, and emotional sources.

Instead, there’s quite literally a rainbow of different eating disorders that have been documented by the medical world. Some of them are more well-known than others (like anorexia and bulimia, for example) whereas other eating disorders are only known by a handful of researchers in those that may be living with them.

Below we touch on some of the different types of eating disorders researchers have been able to classify.

ANOREXIA NERVOSA

Perhaps the most well-known of all the eating disorders out there, anorexia affects women more frequently than men and is an eating disorder that begins to establish itself in the adolescent years. Individuals that are struggling with anorexia restrict their caloric intake over fears and concerns of gaining weight, regardless of the reality of their body composition.

BULIMIA NERVOSA

The next most well-known eating disorder, this condition also starts to develop in the adolescent years of our youth and impacts women more frequently than men. Individuals that are struggling with bulimia find themselves binging on larger quantities of food in a relatively short block of time – followed by a “purging” that has them vomiting, using laxatives or diuretics to move waste from the body, or excessive exercise to burn those calories away.

PICA

This eating disorder is nowhere near as well-known or as understood by the majority of the public as the two we described above, and is classified by researchers as intense cravings to consume nonfood substances. People suffering from this eating disorder find themselves compulsively wanting to eat things like laundry detergent, hair, dirt, cornstarch, paper, and more. Pregnant women, young children, and those that have been diagnosed with mental disorders are the most frequently afflicted.

AFRID

This eating disorder typically impacts children younger than the age of seven, and is recognized by researchers as an extreme dislike of certain temperature foods, certain textures, certain colors, and even certain smells and tastes. Some children grow out of this eating disorder but others have of these eating habits in this condition follow them well into adulthood.

Obviously, there are a whole host of other eating disorders that we haven’t been able to fully describe.

The general public is becoming more and more educated about these kinds of conditions – serious medical conditions – which is great news, considering the fact that for so long the popular common misconception was that these medical issues were nothing more than “mental blocks”, fads, or voluntary choices made by individuals looking to transform their body.

We now understand that nothing could be further from the truth, and that these mental impairments are anything but voluntary and have the potential to do significant emotional and physical damage when left unchecked.